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Big Ten M5: 03.05.13 Edition

Posted by jnowak on March 5th, 2013

Here’s an inspiring story from Yahoo!‘s Jeff Eisenberg about Nebraska assistant coach Chris Harriman and his son Avery, who suffers from leukemia and recently had a relapse after the family thought it was in the clear. When the Harrimans received the call about Avery’s relapse, it had been about three years since his initial diagnosis, and the survival rate in child patients who relapse drops significantly. The family draws inspiration from each other and elsewhere, confident that they can help Avery battle through the difficulty.

By now, would anyone be surprised to see Michigan State go a “long, long way” in the NCAA Tournament, like Tom Izzo believes his team can? Probably not. We know what any Izzo-coached team is capable of and, despite the Spartans’ current three-game losing streak, this group has shown it has what it takes to compete at the highest level. But if we’ve learned anything over the last two weeks or so, it’s that MSU also has plenty of flaws, so in order to make a serious March run, more things will have to click than have been lately. In the three losses, there have been problems with turnovers, Keith Appling and Branden Dawson, interior defense, closing games down the stretch and allowing lesser role players to have season-high games at inopportune times. If the Spartans are to make that run Izzo’s talking about, some of those issues will have to be shored up soon.

If you didn’t get a good idea of how nasty a hit Nik Stauskas took on Sunday, this photo from the Associated Press will give you a better idea. But 12 stitches later, John Beilein says Stauskas seemed OK when he left the arena and could be back playing for the Wolverines soon, who managed to beat Michigan State without their sharpshooter in the lineup and without making a single three-pointer as a team. “All I can tell you is we had three doctors at the game, and the three doctors did a lot of examination on him,” Beilein said on the Big Ten coaches conference call Monday morning.

Jordan Hulls has seen the entire spectrum of Indiana basketball over the last few years. Indiana, still reeling from sanctions put in place from Kelvin Sampson’s tenure as head coach, suffered losing seasons of 6-25, 10-21 and 12-20. But as Tom Crean helped rebuild the program, Hulls — a former Indiana Mr. Basketball with an unbeaten state championship at Bloomington South High School under his belt — was along for the entire ride. There was a time when conference championships at Indiana were an expectation, and it wasn’t that long ago when it seemed the program was never getting back to that level. Now the Hoosiers are back at that elite level and Hulls’ unlikely path has followed that arc.

To stay on the floor in the Big Ten when you’re not contributing on the offensive end, you have to do a lot of other things right. Austin Hollins is that kind of player for Minnesota, doing his part on defense as the Gopher manage to keep winning without his scoring. Hollins is in a slump, shooting just 27 percent over the last two games while missing all eight of his three-point attempts. In his last seven games overall, he’s shot just under 35 percent from the field and 11.7 percent from long distance. The Minnesota coaches are doing their best to assure Hollins that every shooter goes through lulls like this, hoping it’s not something that will wear on his confidence as the team opens up its most important stretch of the year.